MSP

IDT Corporation has been a visionary in the VoIP space for almost two decades and I’ve always been impressed with the company’s technology and range of solutions in the SIP trunking and hosted PBX spaces. Recently, they have become very aggressive in the UC space, going after a channel and looking to be the disruptor in the market they helped create in the 1990s.

In an in-person interview, IDT/Net2Phone President Jonah Fink told me he thinks his company will keep people up at night. For example, IDT has had decades to build out its international infrastructure which includes POPs and nodes in five cities in Brazil as well as London, Hong Kong, Chile and Peru. They offer unlimited calling to Mexico and Canada as well as a core hosted PBX/SIP trunking plan which consists of South America, Western Europe and Central America.

I have been fortunate enough to cover the technology space – literally since the 80s and 90s – being immersed in the latest and greatest tech in the world and reporting on it to you. Back when magazines were all the rage, I was fortunate to launch one called CTI – which focused on the convergence of voice and data and later Internet Telephony Magazine which focused on IP communications and VoIP.

One thing missing in my decades of being in the media business was real-world experience. In other words, the hands-on knowledge you can only glean from installing and maintaining systems yourself.

With predictions about IoT devices numbering in the billions and revolutionizing every market from medical to industrial, a simple question remains. How will all these devices and solutions get sold? Who will deploy them, connect them, harness the data they emit in order to allow businesses to become more productive and efficient?

A common challenge for many businesses is having adequate connectivity. You’d think in the US this isn't an issue but I can tell you from firsthand experience (I am also CEO of a New York and Connecticut provider of IT support), in many buildings, the landlord signs an exclusive contract with a carrier and subsequently the tenants are stuck with one, often poor choice. Quite often, these buildings have only copper connections and they are generally very old. In other words, the telco locks in a building to avoid having to upgrade service to compete with cablecos.

By technology standards, Dialogic is a veteran – having been established in 1983, the company has supplied communications infrastructure used by carriers, enterprises and developers for many, many decades. The New Jersey company enjoyed the benefit of providing solutions which could be paid for by arbitrage. In the late eighties and nineties, Dialogic boards allowed companies to build computer-telephony solutions which used off-the-shelf computers to compete with custom-built hardware solutions from manufacturers of telecom equipment. Even though Dialogic boards were not cheap, solutions based on their products cost far less than alternatives on the market thanks to the ability to leverage PCs and servers.

Microsoft and Salesforce are getting cozy: The two have decided to extend their strategic partnership to connect their productivity apps and services, with the end goal of more personalized, customer-driven sales activities, achieved through streamlined collaboration.

The two leaders plan to mash up Salesforce with Skype for Business—which will be hosting a conference at this year's upcoming ITEXPO in Anaheim—OneNote, Delve and Windows 10, starting with the Salesforce App for Outlook, which works with Outlook 2013 and Office 365, and Salesforce1 Mobile App for Microsoft Office.

After that, Salesforce will next integrate Microsoft’s unified communications (UC) suite, Skype for Business (formerly known as Microsoft Lync) into its new Lightning Experience. Lightning is the renamed core customer relationship management (CRM) product for Salesforce.

Also in the second half of next year the two will launch the Salesforce1 Mobile App for Windows 10.

These two companies which were once bitter enemies have learned to work closely together - acknowledging the synergies between the dominant Salesforce platform and Microsoft's Skype for Business

solution which is growing rapidly.

In just two weeks, Paco Contreras, Herrera Director WW Product Marketing - Skype for Business will be keynoting ITEXPO in Anaheim, California and I hope he touches on this new collaboration and the benefits it will bring to customers worldwide.

Security experts agree – there is absolutely no way to ensure your network is 100% safe from cybercriminals – if they really want to get in, they will. All you can do is put as many layers down in front of them to make your system less attractive. In addition, malicious users have become experts at writing code which varies its port usage and encrypts packets to be virtually invisible to many of today’s forensic tools as they hide in normal traffic flows.

Moreover, breaches typically start with a break-in or infiltration, then there is reconnaissance and finally, exfiltration.

Companies rare really focusing on their solution partners (SP) – especially when looking to court small to medium business customers as the SP owns the relationship. As reported by Tara Seals on TMCnet recently, Nimble Storage, AT&T, HP, Equinix, NTT America and others are deploying similar strategies to court this market.

In fact, two years ago, AT&T Partner Solutions decided it wanted to attract more customers with up to 20,000 employees and as a result, they decided they would change the way they do businesses. In a recent meeting, Brooks McCorcle, president of the division says they now act more like a Silicon Valley start-up.

While it isn't uncommon for companies to become more nimble in the face of growing competition, it is impressive to see any division of an established carrier making such a claim.

The state of IT security is terrible - that is the only conclusion you can make when breach after breach is reported in the news. Keep in mind these are the breaches we hear about... Countless others go unreported. Hackers are winning the war against companies and customers are caught in the crossfire.

I think I may have one of the best jobs in the world. I admit it is a bit ADHD-inducing as I get involved in lots of areas from new media to the latest technologies in the market as I run this major media company which is TMC. Not only do I get help influence tens of millions of people online I also get to host live events where I meet many of the readers who frequent my blog and TMCnet - the main web portal of TMC where I am CEO.

But the most exciting part of my job comes twice a year when I give away a car to an unsuspecting attendee at ITEXPO. Next week - Friday Feb 3rd at 1:45 pm at the Miami Beach Convention Center, I get to give the next car away and it will be a Ford Mustang.